Vadim Zakharov

THE LAST ACTIONS OF PASTOR IN ROME, 2007

Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship based in American Academy in Rome.

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All the actions were created between September 10 and December 10, 2007. At that time I received a grant from the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship based in American Academy in Rome. In the course of those three lucrative months I conducted numerous actions, took interviews and a few thousand photos. Rome is the greatest suite of humankind. This city has been breathing and living life to the full for already about three thousand years. It constantly brings surprises and lets one inhale all the colours of time, culture and household. Rome, the first city of all cities (it might be compared only to Jerusalem) made me re-estimate to a great extent the work I had done, and provoked constant thoughts like: what have I actually been doing all these years? That was Rome which reminded me of the artist’s great service (I apologize for this conventional pathetics). I didn’t only want to understand and embrace the city with a single glance – I wished to sweep it, touch its stairs, corners, ruins, masterpieces. I penetrated time, ideology and art using tactual sensations. I turned into an urban maniac obsessed with touching everything: I was embracing and kissing stones almost ruined by the time, just like many other crazy individuals did centuries ago. I took over their madness that bridged temporal and perceptual gaps.

As a “pastor” I was attracted by ideology and its attributes. These are for instance confessionals, their construction, architecture, decorative components, history of their evolution. I photographed dozens of confessionals, sometimes touching metal plates (with a tiny piece of plasticine in my hand), the most important thing – material border between God and man, created by Western way of thinking. I needed to experience that border physically, make a replica of such a rarity. Imprint verbal tone of confessions of thousands of people in the slowly firming pulp in my hand. ​